Apple loses against Samsung down-under

Samsung can sell its Galaxy tablet in Australia in time for Christmas after the outfit won a legal victory in a long-running global thermo-nuke patent war with Jobs’ Mob.

Apple is so terrified that people will buy the Samsung Galaxy Tab instead of its iPad that it managed to get a court injunction banning the sale of its rival’s products. The logic is that if there are no rival products in the shops then Australians would be forced to buy the iPad and Jobs’ Mob can continue to say it is the best.

All that went pear shaped when an Australian federal court unanimously decided to lift the preliminary injunction, imposed by a lower court, on sales of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1.

It appears that the judges felt that the preliminary injunction, which was made without Samsung making its case was not “fair dinkum”. In a competitive environment where products changed so fast it was not reasonable to ban a product for a couple of years while a legal mess was sorted out.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald Samsung sang that the ruling clearly affirms that Apple’s legal claims lack merit.

It does not of course mean that legal tactics to keep the products off the shelf until they had become old and smelly had failed.

Justice Lindsay Foster told the court there would be a stay on orders until Friday midnight ET, noting Apple would have to go to the High Court if it wanted this extended.

Apple and Samsung have been locked in an acrimonious battle in 10 countries involving smartphones and tablets since April. The Australian dispute centers on the touch-screen technology used in Samsung’s tablet. Apple claims to have invented it.

Apple has blocked Samsung from selling its tablets in Germany and in the Netherlands it has forced Samsung to modify some smartphones.

Samsung has fought back and sought to block sales of Apple’s latest iPhone 4S, which went on sale early last month, by filing preliminary sales injunction requests in four countries, including Australia. It did not go for an injunction however.